The collaboration with researchers at the Jefferson National Accelerator Laboratory, is called DarkLight.
The particle accelerator at Jefferson Lab was re-tuned to create a focused beam of electrons using a megawatt of power. With all of that concentrated energy, researchers believe they will be able to detect what MIT professor Richard Milner calls “a massive photon,” or A-prime.
If researchers can find their new particle it would represent a fundamental reshuffling of our understanding of the Universe. “It’s totally beyond anything we understand about the physical world,” said Milner. “A massive photon would be totally different,” and outside of our Standard model of the Universe.
We know that the observable Universe, constitutes a fraction of the total material in the Cosmos. In fact, physicists believe over 84% of the total matter in the Universe is dark matter.
More confounding, is that some theorists believe dark matter exhibits contradictory properties. Namely, that it resembles a photon but has mass. This is what has sent physicists on the hunt for A-prime.
But don’t expect the discovery of dark matter to happen anytime soon. The DarkLight project will require another two years of preparation before experiments will begin. Furthermore, researchers expect that another two years will be required before they get good data.
Images Courtesy of MIT